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Firefox 22 launched; now supports video and voice calls, P2P file sharing

Mozilla has updated Firefox to version 22, which brings a host of changes that will surely make using the browser a very interesting experience. The stable

Ramkumar Iyer|Jun 27, 2013, 15:03:25 IST

Mozilla has updated Firefox to version 22, which brings a host of changes that will surely make using the browser a very interesting experience. The stable version of Firefox 22 hit the web earlier this week, and supports voice calling, video chat and P2P file-sharing in the browser itself. This is made possible due to WebRTC, which is now enabled by default.

This update is a big deal because the WebRTC allows developers to create web apps with built-in voice and video calling, and peer-to-peer file sharing without having to implement third-party plugins or software like Adobe Flash. Devs can just add a few lines of code and harness WebRTC’s PeerConnection and DataChannel components to add video/voice calling and file sharing capabilities to their web apps. Under attack...again!

Version 22 sure brings a lot of goodies

The browser also comes enabled with Asm.js optimisations, which is a subset of JavaScript that lets web apps run almost as well as native programs. This is a big plus for gaming and 3D apps within browsers, as these can be made to run quite smoothly in the browser environment. Mozilla first demoed this capability at the Game Developers Conference in March. The company teamed up with Epic Games to port the Citadel demo and Unreal Tournament to Asm.js, and showed off the two ports running natively in Firefox.

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In addition to these, the Windows version of the browser now follows display scaling options so that the text size is rendered as per the resolution—Firefox will render text in a larger font that’s more comfortable to read on HD displays. The Mac OSX version now puts a download progress icon in the Dock. The WebGL rendering has also been improved.

The Android version of the browser, which has so far maintained version parity with the desktop variant, has also been updated to version 22. It now scales completely to present the full tablet UI on smaller tablets, and the WebGL rendering performance has been improved through “asynchronous canvas updates”.

Get the latest version of Firefox for the PC and Mac here. The Android version can be downloaded from Google Play.

By Ramkumar Iyer

Behind his cold and drowsy exterior is the still cold but slightly less sleepy Ram. He's essentially paid to be our own personal grammar nazi. He tends to take his job a little too seriously, so you may sometimes see him running around punching his colleagues in the arm for typos and grammar mistakes. Some of his favorite topics to find mistakes in are games and open source stuff like Linux, but he also maintains a fleeting interest in smartphones. He also loves Michael Jackson's Heal the World the same way a little girl loves cockroaches.